Denial by Keith Ablow

gram, but thought better of using at the station.  I paced Hancock's office, looking at the photos of her with local noteworthies that covered her walls.  There were pictures of her with Mayor Coughlin, City Councilor Caldwell, Commissioner Rollins.  Each photo seemed mostly Hancock, partly because she was so bulky and partly because she was the only woman in the shot.  I chuckled, but grimly.  Waiting for her reminded me a little of the times as a boy when I'd sat in my claustrophobic room on Shepherd Street, trying to distract myself with a Spider-Man comic book from the fact that my father was deep into a fifth of bourbon, pacing the living room and barking orders left over from the front lines of Korea, a place he never spoke of sober.  I'd hear him start up the steps, and my mind would run down a list of lousy options.  I could hide under my bed or in my closet, but the beating would be even worse once he found me.  I could make a break for my window and the fire escape, but I was convinced he could outrun me.  I could yell for my mother, but I knew she was probably hiding already herself.  So I'd wait in silence, listening for my father's deliberate footsteps on the hardwood staircase.  Closer and closer.  For moments I could almost convince myself that Spider-Man was clinging to the wall outside my window, ready to shoot me a web to swing to freedom on.  But like clockwork, when my father reached the fourteenth step, I could just make out the clink of a buckle coming loose, followed by the awful thwacking of leather being pulled through belt loops.  The worst part was the expression on my father's face when he came through my door.  He didn't look angry.  He looked tired and put upon, like he had to take out the garbage.  I didn't understand his detachment and was terrified by it.  Now I know he wasn't after me, didn't even know where his violence was coming from, which probably explains why it always went on so damn long.
    I was just finishing a lap around Hancock's walls of respect when she walked in.  She was winded.  Her ruddy face had gone red.  "Morning, Frank," she said without looking at me.
    "Sorry to complicate your day."
    She went over to her desk and started to unpack her briefcase.  "I rushed over as fast as I could when Malloy called.  But I'm glad you had a little time to yourself in here."  She dropped a sheaf of papers on her blotter, then pulled out a stack of folders and started slipping them into her filing cabinet.  "It's not much of an office — nothing like a doctor's or a lawyer's — but I'm kind of proud of it, just the same.  She closed the file drawer, walked around to the front of her desk and sat on the edge.  She nodded at the photos on the walls.  "I like to think if you look around you get a sense that everybody working in a city, from a cop to a teacher, is connected to everybody else.  It's very important that no one think of himself as a free agent.  Because without teamwork this city — any city — would die."
    I held up my hands.  "I get where you're headed."
    "I thought you did," she said, shaking her head, "but I'm not sure anymore.  Unless I got the wrong report, you went behind my back and injected my prisoner with narcotics.  If that's your idea of teamwork ..."
    "If you let me, I'll explain."
    "Please."  She worked her nails against one another.  A chip of red paint flew into the air.  "Explain."
    "Look, I had to do something quick.  Guys like Westmoreland, the real paranoid schizophrenics, believe they're constantly under siege.  Everybody's trying to get inside them, listen to their thoughts, insert ideas into their minds.  We'd have to fill him full of Thorazine for weeks to have any hope of breaking through his paranoia.  And we need answers now."
    "Maybe that's because you don't like the answers we've got.  But you're not running this department.  I am.  And I only asked you one question — whether I could take a confession